Spring break – subbing full time

Quote of the week:
Setup for the story: when little students continually tell me how to run THEIR classroom the RIGHT way, I often will use their teacher’s name and ask, “Do I look like Mrs. —–?” (No!) “Then you need to know that I am going to do thing differently today than Mrs. —–”  Yesterday – I got a different answer. “Do I look like Mrs. Schmitt?” “No!” says Madison (age 7). “You look like Mrs. Schmitt when she got old.”  Thanx a lot, kid. 🙂

I’m on spring break from Henry Ford College, so that means I’m working full time this week. I had two days at the Montessori school with K-2, one day in Plymouth and one in Livonia – as art teacher and then as 3rd grade (I think  – honestly, they are all running together so much that I forget easily!) Tomorrow is Westland 2nd grade.

The best part today was when I worked with a group of 6 first-graders for their reading group. We worked on prefixes (un, re and pre) and read a short booklet together. It’s really pleasant to teach small groups like that.

Another great part was – again – teaching the Kindergarteners a few songs (same old ones, but new group). Ha! I can imagine a gathering that just happens to include all the classes I’ve taught this year where someone starts humming “Five Little Bluebirds” and suddenly about 500 little kids join in – a mini flash mob. Sigh. The thought brings a tear to my eye. (Actually, I would SO crack up laughing.)

Negative. Some tasks the kids have to do seem pretty useless and that always annoys me. There are LOTS of photocopies with rather poor drawings of everyday items, done very small, done in b/w and sometimes even the teachers can’t figure out what is in the picture, let alone the kids, who are supposed to cut out a seemingly endless amount of little squares and glue-stick them to the correct category on another sheet. This – if they don’t constantly complain about or mess with their glue stick, lose the little squares all over the floor because they didn’t put them into the lid of their crayon boxes, or rip them when they accidentally call an umbrella a liquid and then realize ooops, it’s really a solid, and try to move it. Part of this is for motor skills practice. Part of it is for showing their knowledge. I say – let them have at several pieces of construction paper to practice with their scissors, and just ask them outright to identify solids, liquids and gases without having to figure out what the ridiculous little picture might be.

Sometimes repetition is necessary. Sometimes it bores the pants off the kids – no wonder
they balk at some of what they are required to do.